Ernst Jäckh

Ernst Jäckh (February 22, 1875 – August 17, 1959) was a German journalist, diplomat, author, and academic who later lived in Great Britain and the United States. He is most known for having advocated for first Germany, and then the United States, having better relations with Turkey. He was the founder and leader of the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin from 1920 to 1933.

Early life and education

Jäckh was born in Urach, Germany.

His secondary education was at the theological seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren and at technical school in Stuttgart. He then was a student at the University of Breslau, the University of Geneva, the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Heidelberg University.

Career in Germany Ernst Jäckh and the Turkish study commission in Heilbronn, on July 8, 1911. Jäckh stands in the middle in the background (behind him the lamp attached to the wall), with the hat taken off in his right hand. A journalist during his early years, Jäckh worked as an editor for the paper in Heilbronn.

Starting in 1908, Jäckh promoted the German-Turkish Alliance, and he founded the in 1912.

Jäckh suffered a personal loss when his only son, 18-year-old Hans, was killed in action in September 1918, on the Chemin des Dames, during the Second Battle of the Marne. The death, coupled with the demise of the German Empire, changed his thinking about the nature of international relations. During the 1920s, it was considered Berlin's best school for the study of political behavior. The Hochschule benefited from Jäckh's abilities to fit in with both liberal and conservative factions and act as a consensus builder. He gave lecture tours in America, made contacts there, and secured funding for the Hochschule's library and publications from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. As the decade went on, Jäckh promoted the idea of a "New Germany", one that was democratic and internationalist in perspective.

Jäckh, like other German academics, witnessed first-hand the demise of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of the Nazi Party. While some of the academics perceived immediately the reality of the Nazis, Jäckh did not. Indeed in public statements and a private letter to Hitler, he maintained that a continuity was possible between the liberalism of Naumann and the national socialism of the new regime. Jäckh worked with the German branch of the society, which at first had close ties to the Nazi Party; but subsequently, the Nazis grew suspicious of both the branch and of Jäckh, reporting that Jäckh was a "highly murky personality" and that he was "married to a Jew" and thus could not be relied upon to represent German interests in international settings.

Jäckh became a British citizen and represented the British Foreign office on trips he took to Turkey and Europe.

Career in the United States In 1940, he migrated further to the United States where he became Professor of Public Law and Government at Columbia University, focusing on the politics of the regions of Germany, the Balkans, and the Middle East. his aim was to explain modern Turkey to American readers and to foster improvement in Turkey–United States relations. Jäckh then became a consultant at Columbia's School of International Affairs,

Legacy As an academic, Jäckh has not been highly regarded in terms of scholarship or original thought. Author Sevil Özçalık states that "Jäckh's reputation was largely self-created throughout his career, which also favorably shaped other people's perception of him."

This reputation was maintained to the end of his life, with obituaries of him hailing his claimed opposition to the Nazi regime.

Published works

Jäckh wrote some twenty-one books, including some under the name Ernest Jackh. His books include: Albanian War Der Austeigende Halbmonde Background of the Middle East Deutschland im Orient The War for Man's Soul (1943) The Rising Crescent (Farrar & Rinehart, 1944)